Rogue Street View engineer is identified

Mark Raby, 1st May 2012

Marius Milner may not be on the FBI's most wanted list, but his actions are causing just as much of a stir.
Milner has been identified by a former state investigator as the Google employee who inserted a piece of code in the Google Street View car's software, which enabled the company to collect WiFi data from individual homes throughout the country.

This unauthorized collection of personal data became the subject of a highly publicized Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigation, which led to Google singling out one individual as the source of the problem.

The search giant said it never intended to collect the WiFi data, and that the engineer was acting on his own volition. However, those claims have been disputed since the engineer is believed to have told other employees about the code and also to have presented it in meetings with members of Google management.

Both the FCC and Google refused to identify the man's name, but back in 2010, when a state investigation first began looking into this issue, his name was revealed to investigators, so it was only a matter of time before it became leaked to the public.

His identity was revealed to the New York Times by someone who was on that investigation team back in 2010 but who no longer works for the state.

Milner apparently used to work at Lucent Technologies, a company specializing in computer networking and communications. According to an online profile, he has been with Gogle since 2003.